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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23487274">when the lights come up (do you know what you're doing?)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourobdtst/pseuds/yourobdtst'>yourobdtst</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>NCT (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, Open Ending, au: neo noir, nomin is implied but not necessarily explicitly together</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 08:54:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,415</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23487274</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourobdtst/pseuds/yourobdtst</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“So it’s only fair,” he says, and it’s a front. He knows he’s powerless, but he’s got an entire city beneath his fingertips, weak as he is. “It’s only fair they lose something too.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>dream jukebox fest: round one</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>when the lights come up (do you know what you're doing?)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>based on lorde's song bravado off of pure heroine</p><p>i hope you enjoy!!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Jaemin’s best friend goes missing, Jaemin vows to tear the city apart to find him.</p><p>Jaemin has spent most of his life before his wall of computer screens. Jeno never seemed to mind. Jaemin idles his time hacking his way into places he has no business being for money and he speaks code better than he speaks to people, and Jeno curled up on his swivel chair with him like a cat and made a home in the quiet keyboard taps.</p><p>The city network is easy enough to tap into. Jaemin’s been doing it for years. It’s no strain to light up his screens with every angle from the city surveillance cameras he can think of that Jeno might have passed, a gridwork of overbearing buildings and endless pulses of violent neon.</p><p>But it’s agonizing, to sift through hours, <em>days</em>, of video, and come up empty handed. Jeno is nowhere, nowhere where Jaemin’s deft keystrokes can find him—Jeno is gone. Jaemin sees his computer screens through a haze of tears.</p><p>Jeno drops off the face of the earth, disappearing into the steelwork of their putrid, vibrant city, and Jaemin swears he will raise hell to get him back.</p><p>***</p><p>The city does nothing. Jeno was an orphan, and hardly a genius, hardly had the skill that Jaemin had with computers, hardly made himself useful to the unfeeling grid of a smog-shrouded neon city. Jaemin files a missing persons report—it’s refiled by the city as <em>presumed dead</em> within hours. </p><p>Jaemin almost tears the wiring out of the walls.</p><p>He was more than a written off case file to Jaemin; he was more than useful, more than necessary. He was everything. He was a childhood, and a future, and a thousand and one promises passed across smiling lips.</p><p>Jeno is presumed dead, on record. Jaemin,behind his screens, is going to make someone pay.</p><p>***</p><p>Jaemin lights the city up orange, hacks the software that controls the latticework of lights that cover every imposing building like veins of a beating heart. He watches from a dozen camera angles as the city screeches to a halt, mesmerized and fearful of such a change; he watches as they try to regain control, trace the hack back to him; he waits until they realize they never will.</p><p>He has not seen what little daylight filters through the smog in weeks. All he sees is screens, and cameras, and dirty work in the city’s underground.</p><p>He always knew this city was in shambles under the gleaming lights and smiles on the faces of people who could afford to ignore it. He plans to tear it all apart, brick by shaky brick.</p><p><em>Where is he?</em> Jaemin wants to plaster it on every screen, until everyone sees it. Until whoever took Jeno knows that someone is hunting for them. He wants to paint the walls with it, like a war cry.</p><p>He doesn’t. He lights the city up orange, and lets everyone who watches know that there’s someone new in charge.</p><p>***</p><p>Of course Renjun knew it was him.</p><p>“Impressive.” He says, impassively, as he drags his feet across Jaemin’s floor, gets an eyeful of what every screen has to say. He stops at one tucked in a corner, playing a loop of Jeno exiting a cafe, on the phone, laughing. It’s dated two days before he disappeared.</p><p>“The city grid isn’t easy to access. They’re looking for you.” He continues.</p><p>Jaemin hums, keyboard clicks, switches his view. “I’m right here,” he scoffs. “But if they know it’s me, they should be looking for him.”</p><p>Renjun sighs. “Not <em>you</em>, specifically. But they’re searching for who did it. Who’s <em>doing</em> it.”</p><p>The streets are still glowing orange. It’s been days. Jaemin has his grip, and he’s not letting go.</p><p>But it makes Jaemin’s gut twist. He’s not looking for infamy, only due penance. He’s not looking to be a name, only a force.</p><p>“They won’t find me.” Jaemin mutters. “You know I’m better than that.”</p><p>Renjun stops. The lights of the computer screen make him look paler than he is, and Jaemin knows he himself must look absolutely sickly by now.</p><p>“I’m a little nervous of how good you are.” He says. The honesty is clear. “Do you know what you’re doing, Jaemin?”</p><p>Jaemin smiles. It’s bitter.</p><p>“It won’t—” Renjun starts.</p><p>“I know it won’t bring him back.” Jaemin bites. “But I lost something.”</p><p>His voice is wobbling. His fingers are shaking, and he hides it by cracking open hospital records, just because he can. He’s better than giving up, stronger than crying, more powerful behind a computer than anyone can contend with.</p><p>But he’s also nothing without his best friend. The force he is behind his computer is all he has without Jeno.</p><p>“So it’s only fair,” he says, and it’s a front. He knows he’s powerless, but he’s got an entire city beneath his fingertips, weak as he is. “It’s only fair they lose something too.”</p><p>***</p><p>Their city government is filthy, and Jaemin sees to it that everyone knows.</p><p>He digs up every record no one was supposed to find, every phone call, every encrypted message, every source of funds written off as “donation”; he tracks down every name wiped off official records and banished to work below grounds, he tracks every hit, every scheme, everything kept under careful wraps that Jaemin peels back layer by layer.</p><p>The city moves on dirty money, and he lights the city screens up with all of it. He hacks the news outlets, freezes them to display his own story. He makes the streets flash violent orange.</p><p>He makes them pay by their own citizens’ hands. He hides behind his screen and smiles as he watches.</p><p>***</p><p>Jaemin doesn’t think about it—refuses to.</p><p>Refuses to acknowledge that he sunk his talented fingers into every electronic hole he could find, digging, hunting, chasing, and came up without a scrap of a mention of Jeno.</p><p>Jaemin is good. He’s <em>excellent</em>, he’s spent his whole life becoming the best behind a screen with the fact that he has no trace to show for it being exactly what he has to show for it; and the moment his proficiency matters, it’s not enough.</p><p>He’s getting desperate. And he makes bold moves wearing the face of someone brash when he knows he’s nothing.</p><p>***</p><p>“He wouldn’t have stopped me,” Jaemin says into his phone speaker.</p><p><em>“He would have. But I’m not him.”</em> Renjun’s voice crackles through. He speaks with a tone of misery. <em>“So what now?”</em></p><p>Jaemin can’t take it. Can’t take watching replays of Jeno on every camera that caught him, talking to a friend they shared about him like Jaemin is unreasonable for fighting for him back. Can’t take how Renjun doesn’t come to see him anymore. Can’t take that with every day that goes by, the city hunts harder for him, and Jeno’s case file rots.</p><p>
  <em>“I asked you before, if you knew what you were doing. That question still stands. You’re scaling a mountain, do you know how high it is?”</em>
</p><p>Jaemin hangs up. His hands shake.</p><p>***</p><p>Jaemin blacks out the city. </p><p>The smog is heavy, and sunlight hardly filters through. He cuts power to every neon sign, every building gets a surge that shatters their lightbulbs, but he leaves every light up billboard standing, oscillating the words he’s been demanding for weeks.</p><p><em>WHERE IS HE</em>. It’s the only light that bathes the city. It’s the only light that washes over him as he steps outside for the first time in weeks.</p><p><em>WHERE IS HE.</em> All consuming and the source of all his strength. When the lights come up again he won’t be a scared, lonely little boy behind a dozen impenetrable screens. His front will be gone, his facade slipped away, and he’ll be left to face the city stronger for it.</p><p>This city runs on dirty money, and he’s washing it clean, rinsing it right down the drain as he walks those violent streets. His programs are at home running, untouchable, unbreakable, and the city is weak under his rule. And as he watches it burn in absolute darkness around him, he lets reality wash over him.</p><p>Jeno is gone.</p><p><em>WHERE IS HE</em>. </p><p>Gone, gone like funds, and files, and any trace that Jaemin ever existed; Jeno is gone and he’s soon to be followed.</p><p>When the lights come up again Jaemin will be long gone, a stain of overconfidence in desperation left in his wake. </p>
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